On it’s opening night, The Golden Compass, brought in just over $9 million. In comparison, the last Harry Potter movie raked in over $100 million it’s first day. $26 million was the take for TGC this whole weekend. Costing almost $200 million to produce, this is a huge disappointment for New Line Cinema.
Why the paltry profits? Is it because Bill Donohue of the Catholic League called for a boycott? Unlikely, since the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gave the film a thumbs up and considering that, in contrast, the Da Vinci Code movie was a whopping success.
I don’t know the answer to why the film has opened so poorly. But I’ll venture a guess. Uh, it’s not any good. That’s right. I saw it on Sunday and it’s lame.
Amazingly, movie critics are predominantly booing the film for all the right reasons. It fails as a piece of artwork. It fails as an entertainment. I’ve even seen a handful of critics putting it in their year-end list of the worst movies of 2007. Others simply say it’s “fairly terrible.”
For those who are interested in a more thorough report, you can access a free article I wrote critiquing the book here, published by Concordia Publishing House. Or you can listen to me talk about it here.
For my money, the only good part of the movie is the character Iorek Byrneson, a marvelous armored talking polar bear. Personally, I adore polar bears. If you ever want to get my attention, just show a picture of a polar bear and I’m yours. There was a fairly stunning polar bear fight scene. And like you, I can never get too many polar bear fights.
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Huh… That’s interesting. I actually thought the movie was pretty good as far as artwork went. Granted, I’ve never read the books, but I really didn’t think it was that bad at all.
Sure, there were a few things here and there that were kind of lame. But on the whole I thought they accomplished what they set out to do. Granted, it’s not as good as (say) the Narnia movie - but I didn’t think, as far as quality is concerned, it was far behind Narnia.
Then again, I rarely ever agree with the critics in what I consider to be good movie “art”.
Nathan,
I have a lot of criticisms but basically I found it pretty boring. My 12 year old son gave it a C. It was a huge disappoint for me. I was really wanting to enjoy it. The book is blasphemous but a much, much better tale.
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